1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a snowshoe or racket for easily moving with or without load in any kind of snow over various snow-covered reliefs.
This snowshoe finds applications in fields such as tourism, walking, competitions, troup movements, first aid.
In some known racket patterns, the shoes are fixed flat to a lattice work or flexible plate forcing the user to lift his legs in an exaggerated way. The result is slow and laboured progress. At each step, the snow on the rear part of the racket is thrown onto the back of the user, causing him a source of annoyance with the consequent risks of making him cold.
In most known rackets, the foot is fixed to the racket in a central position, forcing the user to space his legs abnormally apart for moving.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Rackets have been proposed comprising means for causing the shoe to pivot with respect to the plane of the racket, along a transverse axis. Thus, U.S. Pat. No. 4,161,071 describes a racket comprising a substantially flat rigid tubular frame formed from an inner side member and an outer side member joined together by a front end cross piece and a rear end cross piece. The frame is fixed to a flexible and perforated central bearing surface with a toe passage. A transverse rotating pin, disposed at the rear end of the toe passage, has its two ends retained by the side members; its intermediate part supports a pivoting structure receiving the front part of the shoe, fastening means providing fastening of the shoe to the pivoting structure. The pivoting structure is offset slightly towards the inner side member of the frame, and means allow the axis of rotation of the pivoting structure to be orientated in an oblique direction with respect to the median longitudinal axis of the frame.
With such a device, there is no need to space one's legs apart in an exaggerated way when using the rackets, because of the offcentering of the pivoting structure; and in addition there is no need to raise one's legs in an exaggerated way, because of the possibility of rotating the pivoting structure about its axis of rotation.
However, it has been discovered that these known rackets have insufficient holding power on hard snow, causing dangerous sliding.
Furthermore, the fastening for the shoe does not provide good holding of the foot when moving forwards, and mainly across slopes and downhill. Thus, the user cannot control the direction of the racket.
Furthermore, rotation of the pivoting structure with respect to the racket is not limited; during downhill travel, it frequently happens that the racket makes a complete revolution about the axis of rotation, causing dangerous falls.